All the Lonely Monsters
by Pir8grl
Summary: The Doctor, Clara, and Jack, post-Trenzalore and post-Miracle Day.
1. Chapter 1

Captain Jack Harkness engulfed the Doctor in a rough bear hug. "Looking good, Doc! Different, but good."

"And you. The same as ever. I don't think I'll ever get used to that."

"And who is this?" Jack asked, with his patented 'Jack sees a pretty face' mega-watt grin.

Clara smiled warmly and extended her hand. "It's good to see you again, Jack," she said, remembering only her own memories of him - images of the handsome, flirting adventurer - and not thinking that his recollections might not be so pleasant.

"Have we met?" he asked, slightly puzzled. Jack stared intently into Clara's eyes, still holding onto her hand. "We **_have_** met before," he said slowly. "But it was on the Gamestation and you- No. That's-"

"I believe the word you're looking for, Jack, is 'impossible.'"

"I'm sorry," Clara mumbled, glancing up at the Doctor in a mute appeal for support as she finally realized her mistake.

"You've nothing to apologize for, Clara," the Doctor replied firmly, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Jack's gaze flickered from Clara's face to the Doctor's. "She was on the Gamestation. How was she on the Gamestation? And she died. She was one of the people who helped me with the defense, so you could set up the Delta Wave. That damned gun musta weighed more than she did, but she was so brave. And she died."

"So did you, if you recall," the Doctor reminded him gently.

"Did Rose bring her back, too? Is she like me?"

"No, Jack, Clara is completely different from you."

"I can see that," Jack replied, with a look that would be considered outrageously suggestive on anyone else. On him, it was just, well…Jack.

"Down boy!" Clara laughed.

"I don't understand," Jack said, studying the two of them. He excelled at reading body language, and they were obviously close, maybe as close as the Doctor and Rose when he first met them. He doesn't judge; he's lived for centuries, too, and seen the passing of spouses and lovers, and seen the madness of others who tried to close off their hearts and live without love. He's envious of what they have but doesn't begrudge it. "Why didn't you save her? You sent Rose home, why not Clara, too?"

"He didn't know me then, didn't even know I was there" Clara explained gently. "And I was there to save him, not the other way 'round."

"It's complicated, Jack."

"Isn't it always?"

"It's all right, Jack, truly," Clara reassured him. She glanced up at the Doctor again and he hastened to explain.

"Shortest possible version of a story that's been going on for over a thousand years: an old adversary of mine managed to find my tomb and entered my timeline, contaminating it, overturning all my victories, undoing any good thing I'd ever achieved. Clara followed him in and saved me."

Jack's brow furrowed in consternation. "I wanna say that's impossible, but it is you we're talking about. But how is she still alive? I saw her die."

"You saw one of me die," Clara corrected gently. "I was…shattered into a million different echoes, all along the Doctor's lifetime. Alot of it wasn't very pleasant." Her hand twitched ever so slightly in the Doctor's direction and he instantly engulfed it in both his own.

Jack's lips twisted into a wry grin. "So you are like me…another impossible thing. How do you manage to travel in the TARDIS? She doesn't much like me since Rose changed me."

Clara laughed at that. "She didn't like me at all, at first, but now she's remembered that I introduced them."

"I think I'd like to hear that story someday," Jack replied.

"Anyway, Jack, why did you contact me?" the Doctor asked.

"I need a favor."

"I'm listening," the Doctor said neutrally.

"Since the Hub was destroyed, there's been no one monitoring the rift. Can you run a few scans with the TARDIS? Make sure everything's all right?"

"Certainly. UNIT has the proper resources to keep tabs on the rift. I can put you in touch with someone I trust." The Doctor glanced down at his and Clara's intertwined hands, flushing with just a hint of guilt. "Jack," he said slowly, "I know you and Rose were quite close…"

"Rose loved you more than anything in the entire universe, Doctor," Jack reminded him. "She'd want you to be happy. Just like you tried to make her happy, the only way you could, in the end." He met Clara's eyes, and she nodded slightly. "And besides…people like us…we can't just keep living for centuries on our own. That much time, it makes monsters of us. I've seen it happen to others, and I'm not gonna let it happen to me. Ianto wouldn't want that."

"No, he wouldn't," the Doctor agreed. He shut his eyes momentarily against the ghostly images of the past. Clara noticed and squeezed his hand. "All right then, let's go check on this rift of yours."

"I'll wait here, if you don't mind. Your ship doesn't like me, remember?" Jack held out his hands to Clara and pulled her in close. "Thanks for helping me, back on the Gamestation," he said, kissing her left cheek. "And thanks for saving him," he added, kissing her right cheek.

"I hope you find someone to save you," she whispered.

"Oh, I will…or they'll find me. Someday," Jack told her, with a bittersweet smile, "I'll just look up, and see someone, see that something in their eyes…"

"I hope you find him soon."

"Or her. I'm-"

"-flexible," Clara finished in unison with him.

"You know," Jack mused, "If you ever get tired of traveling with this guy…"

"Never," Clara replied. "Not in a thousand years."

"And counting," the Doctor added, gently reclaiming her hand to lead her back to the TARDIS.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack gazed out over the water, lost in thought. He'd been contemplating telling the Doctor about Rex, and what they'd discovered about his blood, and the final resolution of the 'miracle,' but now, seeing the way the Doctor looked at Clara, and hearing her story, he wasn't so sure. He wasn't sure anyone should be possessed of that knowledge; it was simply too tempting.

In the midst of that horrible scene in Thames House, Jack would have done anything, dared anything, if it meant saving Ianto. In his heart though, Jack wasn't sure that this was a 'gift' he'd willingly share with anyone. It would have killed him to see the love in Ianto's eyes turn to something else when he realized that Jack had doomed him to die, over and over again, feeling and remembering all the pain each time.

He and the Doctor were subject to some of the very same impulses. Jack didn't know how far the Doctor might go to save Clara from dying again, but he knew he wouldn't wish this existence on anyone else. He decided he'd keep his own counsel for now.

He smiled as Clara came up to lean against the railing beside him.

"It's beautiful here," she breathed.

"Isn't it against the law for anyone English to say anything nice about Wales?"

Clara laughed delightedly and laid a hand on his arm. "I'm so glad I got to meet you properly this time, Jack."

"So am I. Where's the Doctor?" he asked, surprised to see her out alone. If she were his, he'd never let her out of his sight, especially not after coming so close to losing her forever.

"Still in the TARDIS, fiddling about. But I'm sure he's got a scanner aimed at me," she added, sensing Jack's unspoken question. "He blames himself for what happened at Trenzalore. He thinks there should have been another way. But there wasn't…not that any of us could see…and there was just **_no time_**. Bit rich, that."

"He thinks he should be able to protect everyone, all the time."

"The universe doesn't always agree."

"And that frustrates the hell out of him." Jack cocked his head and stared very intently into her eyes. "Do you love him?"

Clara's face blushed a delicate pink. "Yes, I suppose I do. It's just…it seems so - I don't know - insignificant - for someone like me to talk about loving someone like the Doctor. When that thing was killing him, whole star systems were going out, millions of people. I had to save him, so he could save them. It didn't matter about me."

"It does matter, Clara," Jack told her emphatically. "Love is **_never_** insignificant. It was the love of a simple human girl that saved him after the Time War, and it's the love of another that's saving him right now."

"Saving him from what?"

"From himself."


	3. Chapter 3

Clara and the Doctor were relaxing in the library after sending Jack on his way with contact information for Kate Stewart at UNIT, and the Doctor's reassurances that the rift was more or less behaving itself. It frustrated Clara that she still tired so easily, and she thought it must be maddening for the Doctor, with his manic energy levels, but he'd just guided her gently to the wonderfully overstuffed couch in front of the fireplace.

Clara lay curled on the couch, half drowsing against the Doctor's side. His arm was draped loosely around her shoulders. He'd been reading aloud from a book of poetry, and something in those lines about 'a tall ship, and a star to steer her by' made her think of Jack. She could picture him on a full-rigged sailing vessel, which was rather amusing, considering how far out in the future he'd been born.

"Doctor? Will Jack be all right?"

"I think he will. He'll probably never completely heal from losing Ianto, but his heart is still open. That's what will keep him safe. He knows…he said it himself…people like us shouldn't be alone."

"Is that what happened to that…other one? The other you that we saw in your time stream? Was he alone?" She felt him shift slightly, and knew he was casting about for an excuse to move - tea, another book - anything to avoid this particular discussion. She curled one hand into his jacket to hold him by her side.

He glanced down at that small hand that had reached out and saved him, so many times, and knew he owed her this truth. "Yes. I was alone then. I suppose Donna said it best: sometimes I need someone to stop me. Clara, I am **_so_** powerful, much more than you can possibly realize, and when I'm alone, it's like I'm…drunk on that power, and all I can see is what I **_can_** do, and I don't stop to think if I **_should_** do it. You've seen all of it, all of my mistakes, all the things I've done. I don't know how you can bear to look at me."

Clara's arms slid around the Doctor's waist, holding him in place. "I have seen it all, remember? And for all the trouble you manage to fall into, do you know the one thing I've never ever seen, not once, in a thousand years? I've never seen you do **_anything _**out of malicious intent."

"Then that just makes me careless. I'm not so sure that's an improvement."

"I'll take careless over evil any day. Though, I think I'd say 'impulsive.' Because you do care, you just don't always think your way through things before you go ahead and do them."

"So many mistakes. So many things I've done wrong. So many lives I've screwed up."

"So many things you've done right," Clara countered. "So many lives you've saved."

"Xoanon."

"You went back, you fixed it. And besides, if it had never happened in the first place, you'd never have met your friend Leela."

"Mars."

"That was her decision."

"The Time War."

"Did you start it?"

"No!"

"And what was going through your mind, when you did what you did? What you had to do?"

"I saw everything, all of creation, burning, unless the war stopped, completely and immediately."

"So, you placed the welfare of all the other people in the cosmos, people you never knew, never would know, before the lives of your own people. That's not the action of a monster…it's the action of an angel."

His arms tightened convulsively around her. "You."

"Me. I'm still here, you know. Not going anywhere." She burrowed closer into his embrace.

"You should."

"I shouldn't. Because there's one thing that all your really bad mistakes had in common. You were alone."


	4. Chapter 4

He was right, the Doctor thought as he looked down at Clara, dozing comfortably in his arms. He knew it in his hearts, he really should let her go. She was a young, human girl and she should be doing young, human things, not chasing 'round the galaxies with a crazy old man like him. She should be focusing her affections on someone with a similar lifespan, someone who could give her a family and grow old together with her.

But he couldn't. He couldn't let her go, and not just for the beneficently scientific reasoning that there'd never been a human who entered a Time Lord's time stream before and he needed to monitor her, for her own safety. No. It was because he was selfish, and didn't want to let her go. And also, because she was right. All of his truly spectacular screw ups had occurred when he was alone. He didn't want to be alone again. Far too many people had warned him against it, and he'd seen the devastating consequences when he brushed off their concerns.

"You're not, you know," Clara murmured sleepily.

"What?" the Doctor asked, more sharply than he probably intended.

"Selfish. You're not. Or, if you are, than I am, too. I don't want to let you go, either."

"Did I say that out loud?"

"Maybe. Or maybe you were just thinking very hard."

"And how would you know what I'm thinking?" he teased.

"Because I know you," Clara replied simply.

"Probably better than anyone else in the universe," the Doctor mused. "And you want to stay with me anyway."

"Yes, I do."

He stared into Clara's lovely brown eyes for an eternal moment, then a broad grin spread over his face, and he stood suddenly, scooping her up into his arms.

"What's this?" she laughed.

"Well, if you're so intent on staying with me, we need to get you back to your room!"

"Bit keen, are we?"

"Back to your room for sleep," he replied indignantly. "Can't have you nodding off in the middle of our next adventure, can we?"


End file.
